Tuesday, 25 November 2014

Chapter 6

COLD WINDS blew in from regions where absolute winter reigned –
passing over the pearly steppes of Lapland, over the lakes and dark
forests of Finland, over the border of Karelia harrowed with white
trenches and mantraps- and dispersed the Baltic fogs. Perfect clear days
followed. The air was so transparent that the laws of perspective
seemed somehow altered. Looking across the Neva, you could make out the
tiniest details of buildings, the silhouettes of pedestrians, the forms
of sphinxes brought over from Memphis and erected on the edge of the
river by emperors, only to witness after four thousand years the fall of
new empires. The slim white columns crowned with statues and the tall
golden spire of the Admiralty stood out at the hub of deserted avenues
stretching toward stations oppressed by shimmering silence. Trams with
grey swarms of passengers clinging to their sides moved slowly over the
bridges through the infinite light composed of pale, pure blue of the
sky, the gold of a cold sun intellectual in its clarity, and reflected
snow. Looking out through the windows of the old Senate, where anaemic
scholars were shifting through the archives of the Czarist Secret
Police, we contemplated the iridescent white square, dominated by
Falconet’s bronze: the Emperor Peter, draped in Roman garb, rearing his
horse on the edge of a precipice overlooking the future or the abyss…
And, farther on, the university embankment lined with neat old houses –
red, white, and yellow- which reminded you of an archaic Holland.

“Look outside,” Professor Lytaev said to me, “and preserve the
memory; you are more likely to live through these times than I am. The
air of Venice does not possess this transparency, for the activity of
men disturbs it, and the heat rising from the old stones makes it
tremble. Nothing trembles here, the air is crystal. No smoking chimneys,
no busy tumultuous plazas. I have only seen such transparency and calm
on the high plateaus of Mongolia. That is where I came to understand why
the Chinese artists are able to draw such pure close horizons.”
All this beauty was perhaps the sign of our death. Not a single chimney
was smoking. The city was thus dying. And, like shipwrecked men on a
raft devouring each other, we were about to fight among ourselves,
workers against workers, revolutionaries against revolutionaries. If
Great Works succeeded in carrying along the other factories, we would
witness a general strike pitting the populace of the dead factories
against the Revolution. It would be the revolt of despair against the
stubborn, wilful, organized revolt which still had hope. It would be
fervid and unthinking treason of some of the best, ready to ally
themselves with the famine against the dictatorship because they
couldn’t understand that the faith of millions of men can also die for
lack of bread, that we are less and less free men, more and more, in an
exhausted, besieged city, an army in rags whose safety lies in terror
and discipline.

Low crooked wooden houses, each leaning a different way, lined both
sides of the alley. Plants were visible in the windows. The alley seemed
wide because the houses were so small. It could have been a street in
an ancient town had it not ended in a red-brick wall surmounted by tall,
blackened glass panes, broken in places. A few paces on stood a
chimney, black against the sky, just turning blue. The light was getting
brighter, objects began to stand out more and more sharply from one
instant to the next. At the corner of the street, huddling against the
old, blackened wood houses, you could see a long line of women. Even
before the first blast of the whistle, they stood there. They were
waiting for the bread for which they waited long hours in vain
yesterday, outside in a blizzard. The shutters of the store at last
opened when it was broad daylight. Did these women’s eyes derive any joy
from this marvellously open sky, from the perfect sharpnes of forms,
lines, and colours, from the soft, nuanced sparkle of the snow? “What
beautiful weather,” murmured some voices. “Yes,” bitterly answered
others, “but are they going to keep us waiting a long time again?” Hours
passed despairingly. They discussed the news, their troubles, rumours,
ideas… “Het, remember before the war the price of eggs?” – “He beats
her, I tell you, she’s a martyr. Patient as a saint.” – “So they
requisitioned his house, and the flour, aand everything. There’s nothing
left. Nothing but to go out into the world like a poor wanderer, my
God, my God…” – “If the English come, you’ll see. Everybody who raised
his hand for the Communists even once will be hanged…” – “Everybody,
then?” – “Yes, everybody, everybody…” – “Do you remember nice old fat
Mikhei Mikheich…?”
Communal Bakery No. 60, near the Great Works, occupied the former shop
of that nice fat old fellow, who some said had been killed by his
workers and whom others claimed to have seen in town, looking important,
with a briefcase under his arm. In his place, behind the bare counter,
in the cold airless store where the odours of badly cooked bread, dead
rats rotting under the floorboards, and bitter sweat fermenting under
sheepskins mingled, stood two skinny clerks, who took ration cards, cut
off one square tab, and heaved a hunk of black bread as soggy as clay
into gnarled outstretched hands. One woman suddenly burst into tears:
“Someone stole my card, someone stole it. I had it right here a second
ago…” The women who were already on their way out with their bread
gathered around her, the others brushed past, pushing and shoving, the
precious paper with the stamp of the Commune clutched in their fists.
Eddies of unrest moved through the line. “What? What?” The anxiety
spread from one person to another. “Citizeness!” cried one of the clerks
inside. Those waiting outside saw a despairing group flowing back
toward them. “There’s no more bread.” – “When will there be any?” – “I
haven’t the slightest idea,” said the clerk, who now stood in the door
wiping his nose with his fingers. “Go ask the Commissars.” The store
remained open, empty, for the two boys had to put in their hours. They
sneered. “What can we do, little citizenesses? We’re no different than
you.” In the background, over the bare counter, hung a red calico banner
covered with white lettering:

THE WORKERS WANT BREAD, PEACE, AND FREEDOM

The motionless snow covered factory buildings of the Great Works
spread for miles, all the way from the workers’ quarter to the sea.
Drafts of cold air whistled through the skeletons of its workshops.
Strewn in this dessert lay piles of tip-trucks lying on their backs,
old, twisted, resembling tangles of petrified snakes under the snow,
loaded flatcars covered by white carapaces, small locomotives forgotten
on sidings, and piles of scrap metal. The chimneys, nonetheless, still
intermittently belched forth some astonishing black smoke. Life was
concentrated in a few shops full of an odour of soot, cold oil, and
neglected metal. Arc lamps hung like big pale moons; grey daylight
filtered in through high dirty skylights in whose broken panes jagged
patches of blue sky appeared suddenly. The muzzles of the 70-mm. cannon
seemed to be pointing out through them. Drive shafts spun with a weary
sound like out-of-breath hearts. The men on the job were lost among the
machines, reduced to a sort of insignificance, pursued by cold and
hunger, right up to their workbenches, heartsick at the emptiness around
them.

“They call this a factory?” they said. “Ut’s more like a cemetery,,,
We don’t know who the hell we are anymore. We’re no longer worker:
starvelings, worthless beggars, good-for-nothing goldbricks, slobs,
that’s what we are… Some of these men dismantle the machinery to make
cigarette lighters. Other steal brass wire to build themselves rabbit
cages. Some steal coal, machine oil, kerosene. Some of them doing that
kind of work and never even held a job before. Look what’s become of us.
Terrific.”
Groups would swarm around the locomotives in fits and starts, working
furiously. They were the same men. They stole like the rest of them.
They nursed a dark fury against themselves, against fate, against the
Commissars, the Entente, everything which, by killing the factory, was
killing them. They sent delegations to the President of the Soviet of
People’s Commissars of the Northern Commune. Gaunt proletarians in old
boots full of holes wound through the narrow halls of Smolny like
exhausted soldiers. Inside the dictator’s huge office, surrounded by
rugs, leather-covered furniture, shiny telephones, and walls covered
with maps showing the blood-red line of the front drawn around the
Republic, a cowardly timidity overcame even the most vehement among
them. What to do? The fronts are there. No bread, paper money, peasants
refusing to deliver grain. Hold out, hold out, or die by God! But didn’t
we just say precisely that we can’t hold out any longer?...
“Sit down, comrades,” said the President quietly.
The delegation broke up, dispersed onto the sofa, too far away, onto
armchairs too soft. The men remained fiercely silent, embarrassed.
“So, things are going badly?”
An old man who had marched behind Father Gapon in 1905, face wrinkled
like a Chinese mask, stood up to regain his confidence and finally burst
out:
“Bad? Impossible! No way to hold out anymore. Everybody’s going under. The factory doesn’t look like a factory any longer.”
The President also stood up, attentive, knowing all, knowing too that it
was necessary to listen all the way through, then to show the maps,
give out the figures, promise, telephone to the Commune and that, in the
end, there was absolutely nothing to be done. (But you can always hold
on for another hour, another day, another week; and perhaps that hour,
that day, that week will be the decisive one.) He answered in a low
voice, very different from the one people were used to hearing at big
meetings. He talked about starving, ransomed Germany, about Liebknecht’s
fresh blood, about the revolution ripening in Europe… Which of these
men would come to his aid? What was the composition of this delegation?
They had told him that it did not contain any adversaries, just
non-party members, one or two sympathisers… Who?
His man was revealed in a youngish, heavy-jawed fellow who spoke in a
studied manner, the way they do at meetings. The working class could
fight to the end! Every man would do his duty for the International! As
long as the food supply improved; and the factory received the special
rations they had been promised for a month… What he said sounded
strangely false – even though it was profoundly true and necessary to
say it – you could feel he was lying in telling the truth. (“So you want
to get yourself promoted onto the Factory Committee…”)
The same day the women went home without bread, after waiting all
morning in front of the bakeries, a Council of Delegates, whose identity
was secret, plastered some rather well-printed leaflets on the walls
appealing to the proletarians of the factory to take their fate into
their own hands. The strike was in the air. The news went out in every
direction by telephone from the various Committees. Out of 3,700
registered workers, less than two thousand had begun work at seven
o’clock. The chief mechanic, Khivrin, had gone up to the manager’s
office, his cap over one ear, a cigarette in his teeth, and announced in
a nasty voice that his machines weren’t working anymore. “Some kind of
breakdown. I can’t figure out. Send over the engineers.” He announced
this as if it were good news. Groups of Mensheviks and left SRs had held
secret meetings during the night.
“Let’s get this over with.”
A thousand men filled the workshop. A platform with a length of rail for
a balustrade was raised above people’s heads. The Assembly Committee
was seated at on side, around a slightly raised table covered with red
cloth. Timofei rang the chairman’s bell. “Kuriagin has the floor.” The
meeting had already been going on for two hours, dragging and chaotic.
The secretary of the Communist cell had been hooted down. “Give us
bread! Bread! No speeches! We’ve heard all your bullshit before.” As he
was stumbling down from the shaky rostrum, some big guys had grabbed him
by the shoulders and shaken him. He looked thin and defeated in his
military tunic.
“Say it! Tell us you didn’t phone the Special Comission. Go ahead if you dare.”
Timofei, who was delighted by the incident because it heated up the
atmosphere, had controlled the tumult with his long outstretched arms
and his emaciated face.
“Don’t get excited, comrades! We’re the strong ones!”
Kuriagin succeeded in dispelling the anger of these thousand men by
telling an awkward, embarrassing story, saying all the wrong things, and
relaxing them by making them laugh. He told of his trip to the
countryside near Tver and how his three sacks of flour had been seized
on his arrival home. His buddies assumed he had been on sick leave.

“Eat-it-all by yourself! You bastard!” cried a voice. The epithet seemed
to stick to this red-faced sweaty loudmouth, who was floundering
through a tirade against imperialism. Timofei was suffering. A thousand
men and not one voice! So much suffering, so much revolt and not one
voice! The arc lamps hanging from the metal skeleton of the roof cast a
gloomy light over the thousand heads, some covered by old fur hats and
others by shapeless caps. Hard faces, bony noses, ashy complexions,
soiled garments: this was in appearance the same human mass (yet poorer,
shrunken somehow) as during the February Days when the
three-hundred-year-old autocracy crumbled under their pressure (because
then, as now, there was no bread in these neighbourhoods; only people
somehow lived much better in those days); the same mass as in July, when
they poured through the city like a flood ready to carry everything
away; the same mass as in October, when Trotsky’s voice swept them on to
the conquest of power… The same, and yet not the same; altered,
inconsistent now, disoriented, without heart: like an old acquaintance
known for his firm jaw, determined gait, and direct way of speaking who
suddenly appears spineless, flabby, shifty-eyed, and tongue-tied when
you meet him after an absence. Timofei bit his lip. This crowd is
spineless. The best among them have left. Some are dead. Eight hundred
mobilised in six months. Not one voice. Naturally. Leonti had a voice
and, what is more, a head; they say he died in the Urals. Klim is
fightuing on the Don. Kirk is head of something. Lukin, what happened to
Lukin? Timofei could still visualise these veterans standing in this
very shop, three or four ranks of men, successive generations who had
come up and disappeared within a year. Gone. At the head of the army, at
the head of the state, dead: heads riddled with holes, lowered into
graves in the Field of Mars to the sound of funeral marches. The
Revolution is devouring us. And those who remain are without a voice,
for they are the least courageous, the most passive, the followers, the
ones who…
“Enough! Enough!” someone shouted at Kuriagin. “We’ve seen enough of you. That’s it.”
Timofei didn’t know how to speak to mass meetings himself. His pale blue
eyes fogged up as soon as he mounted the rostrum, and all he could see
ahead of him was a whirling, pulsating mist which lured him like an
abyss. His voice was too weak to carry far; his thoughts came out in
tight formulas that didn’t make complete sentences; people’s ears were
still straining to hear him when he had already finished all he had to
say; and since his mind was very sharp, he seemed to lack the breath to
make a speech; he resolved every problem he posed before the audience
even heard it.
Everything seemed lost to him, when a door opened at the rear and Goldin
entered. Timofei, relieved, rang his bell vigorously to get the
attention of the restless, murmuring audience.
“Put a time limit on the speakers!”
Timofei pretended not to hear. This was surely not the moment!
He rose.
“Goldin has the floor.”
Some hands clapped. A strident whistle blast sounded and then broke off
sharply. Head, fists, shoulders shook awkwardly. Goldin seized the
length of the rail before him with both hands – the cold felt good on
his palms- and took possession of the rostrum. He leaned out toward the
crowd, his head hunched into his shoulders; his glance sought out
people’s eyes, held them for a moment, like a black flash, moved on,
leaving a burning trace behind. His hot voice exploded, impassioned from
the start.
“Do you remember, people without bread? How we drove out the Czar and
his little ones, the ministers, the generals, the capitalists, the
police? Tell me!”
“We remember,” replied a choked voice.
“When was that? Say it! Yesterday!
“What we could do yesterday, we can do today. What is the Revolution?
This Revolution which shoots the bourgeois, conquers the Ukraine, makes
the wide world tremble? – The Kremlin? Smolny? Decrees? People’s
Commissars? Come now!” His huge blazing mouth split into a wide grin at
this idea; and this infectious smile, which vanished instantly from his
lips, spread from mouth to mouth, illuminating each man’s soul with the
clarity of his thought. “The Revolution is us! You and me! What we want,
the Revolution needs. Do you understand?”
Then a thundering apostrophe:
“… You, out there! You who manufacture laws and decrees!”
(The men were beginning to feel powerful. They were coming out of their
torpor, electrified, awakening to new dreams of exploits.) “The Ukraine
is in flames. Its fire will never go out. We don’t even know what the
power of the people is yet! But it must not be emasculated by laws and
decrees. We fear neither privations nor sacrifices; we will overthrow
those who would snuff our fires. We demand workers’ freedom,
decentralization, equality of all workers, individual provisioning,
fifteen days paid leave for every worker to go ask his peasant brother
for food! What we demand we are strong enough to take…”
A roar rose in the hall under the steel-beamed roof. Hands applauded
frantically. Showers of cries exploded round this dark, bony,
shaggy-haired man in a black blouse whose long sinuous hands were
kneading the steel bar. All that remains is to put the general strike to
the vote, thought Timofei… Two newcomers were pushing their way through
the crowd toward the rostrum.
Arkadi sat down on the steps so as to be able to keep his head above
the crowd without, however, being too conspicuous. He immediately tried
to pick out the faces of outside agitators among the crowd of faces. He
found one, which amazed him.
Antonov climbed ponderously up the rickety wooden stairs. His thick neck
topped off by small, squarish, ruddy head emerged above the crowd. At
first he was taken for a worker in the factory.
“I want the floor.”
His powerful sonorous voice carried all the way to the back of the hall.
“Comrades..”
“Hey! You don’t have the floor yet,” interjected Timofei. Goldin
shrugged his shoulders. Antonov appeared to bow to the will of the chair
but his heavy presence on that platform already defied it. Waiting
patiently to be allowed to speak, he studied the audience. His narrow
grey eyes searched out expressions and gestures; he could practically
read the words on people’s lips. His impression was favourable. He
became much mire self-assured. The chair decided that it was impossible
to prevent him from talking: the crowd wasn’t sufficiently worked up. So
he started in again:
“Comrades!” He wisely skipped the usual salutation “in the name of the
Party Committee.” “It’s obvious that” – and his thick red neck, his
broad shoulders under heavy furs, his huge stonecutter’s hands resting
on the railing emphasized his point – “the condition of the working
class is becoming intolerable…”
A vague murmur of approval came from the back rows of the audience. Son
of a gun! So they finally noticed! You better believe it; it sure is
intolerable!
“… We’re starving. The bakeries haven’t distributed bread for three
days. It’s a disgrace! What good are paper salaries? We all have pockets
full of rubles, but something to eat would be much more to the point.
The roadblocks set up to prevent individual supply hunting have done
more harm than good in many cases… Things have got to change! They will
change if we have the will. We didn’t make the Revolution in order to
end up like this.”
No one knew anymore if he was talking for or against the strike, for or
against the government. He was repeating the previous harangues almost
word for word, but in a more orderly form. Sure of himself now, his
voice coming strong, his torso erect, he denounced hunger and poverty
along with these thousand men. Goldin blacked in checker squares in his
notebook. What a demagogue! He thought. The mistake was to give him the
floor…
“This morning the Executive Committee decided to call upon you to form
new supply detachments, on the basis of five to ten men for every two
hundred and fifty, and prepared to leave within three days. There’s
wheat at Saratov. Go take it! Don’t lose an hour.” Heads moved in all
directions in agitated confusion: conflicting winds blowing through
wheat before a storm.
“The Commune is sending you four boxcars of provisions: canned goods,
sugar, rice, and white flour: supplies taken from the imperialists by
the glorious Workers’ and Peasants’ Army.”
(-“What?”- “What did he say?” – “Four boxcars?” – “Rice?” – “Yes, rice and canned goods, you hear!” – “Listen, listen!”)
“Tomorrow, this very evening, you must organise teams to handle the
distribution… Make sure that not a single pound of rice gets stolen by
the bureaucrats and profiteers!”
(- “When are the cars arriving?” – “Let him talk!” – “No interruptions!”)
“… I said tomorrow! But there has been talk of a strike from this
platform. Comrades, seven locomotives and thirty cannon are being
repaired in your workshop. Each day’s delay in delivering the
locomotives adds to the famine. Each day’s delay in delivering the
cannon increases the danger. Where is the fool who can’t understand
this? Let him show himself!”
Antonov took a breath. His temples were damp with sweat. He tore open
his collar, popping the buttons. Triumphant – with those four carloads
of provisions behind him – standing erect, he defied an invisible enemy
in hall:
“Let him show himself!”
He threw back his sheepskin-lined coat, showing himself dressed in a
faded blouse with a hole at one elbow, identical with these men. He knew
it was necessary to bawl out crowds that might get away from you, to
shout into their faces the things they would like to shout at you, to
identify with them – against them – through anger and invective. Now was
the moment to bear down.
“There are cowards, slackers, swine, traitors, tools of the Allies,
henchmen of the generals, scoundrels who think only of their skins and
their stomachs, who want to stuff their bellies when the whole
beleaguered Republic is hungry! Let them remember that proletarian
bullets have been cast for their heads!”
Having proffered a threat at the end of his diatribe, he stopped short,
concluding rapidly with an affirmation which nearly brought on applause –
he could see it:
“But I swear, there’s not a single traitor among us!”
Arkadi listened with admiration. Antonov pushed his advantage to the limit:
“Did you know that this week we discovered fifty rifles in the cellars of the Church of St. Nicholas?”
( They were old ceremonial weapons which had been placed among the tombs at the time of the first Turkish campaign.)
“… That Allied agents are planning to blow up the Kronstadt forts?”
(They would have liked to; but the only evidence of a plot was the self-interested report of a double agent)
“… that the Special Commission has just discovered a new conspiracy?”
(The Special Commission was, it is true, looking for this conspiracy.)
The meeting was ending in confusion and defeat. A worker read out the
text of a resolution in a rasping voice: “… the powerful hands of the
proletariat will mercilessly crush…” Always these clichés, thought
Timofei. Boosted onto the shoulders of two men whom the human waves
rocked gently, he shouted: “Workshop B is meeting separately” – for it
was necessary, despite this debacle, to try to tally those men who were
still dependable. Goldin led the way.
The night was about to waylay them on the border between the hubbub and
the silence when a bearded giant with blue-veined neck and temples came
running up to them, gesticulating. You might have thought him drunk.
Bare-chested, teary-eyed, he held up a pair of black hands like hard
roots – ready to grasp anything.

“Look at us!” he shouted. “We’re like dogs. The belly’s empty, they
growl. Throw em a bone, they shut up. Look at me, comrades, little
brothers. I’m like that too. Don’t hold it against us, little brothers,
poverty made us this way!”
He clung to Goldin’s lapels with both hands. His despair was like rage.
His powerful clouded eyes were like ponds whose bottom has been
disturbed, as he stared into the dark eyes opposite him.
“And yet,” he stammered, suddenly releasing his grip, “if you knew what
they have done, these hands. If you knew what they are still capable of,
comrade…”
For a brief instant all that the three men could see in front of them
were those two hands: dreadful, yet trembling with fatigue, hands which
appeared to be charred.